Two Times that Don't Count
by piaffe417
Summary: She's well aware that there is no shortage of people who believe that she's sleeping with him - but she isn't.  She hasn't.  There were just those two times - and they didn't count.
1. Not Counting

**Author's Note:** _I owe Tim Roth both an apology and a thank you. The apology is for not discovering the **genius** of Lie to Me sooner and the thank you is for teaching me the appropriate usage for the word "plonker" in a sentence. (It's changed my life. Seriously.)_

_Standard disclaimers apply to this story (e.g. I don't own the characters but am merely borrowing them and promise to put them back un-bruised when I'm done.) When complete, this will be a post-ep for "Honey" and "Killer App," so all episodes are fair game for spoiling. Consider yourselves warned. Share your thoughts by clicking that magical little button at the bottom. Cheers!_

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><p>She's well aware that there is no shortage of people who believe that she's sleeping with him. She can't blame them, really. Between his lack of regard for her personal space ("Aye, aye, Gill?"), her complete comfort with his lack of regard for her personal space ("You're impossible"), and a shared ESP-like mental connection that has absolutely <em>nothing<em> to do with their respective abilities to read faces, she too would make the same assumption if she were on the outside looking in. They're best friends, both divorced, and (for the most part) wholly unattached to other people, so it's certainly a logical conclusion.

But logical or not, it's not true. Gillian Foster is not sleeping with Cal Lightman. To be even more specific, Gillian Foster has _never_ slept with Cal Lightman, nor he with her.

Well, there was that _one _time. But that was different. That time doesn't count.

The second time doesn't count either.

The third time… Well, if there _were_ to be a third time, that would be indicative of a pattern and it would, by that same logic, have to count, wouldn't it?

So it's good that there was just that one time. And the other time. Neither of which counted.

And since they didn't count, there's not a pattern. There are just two separate occurrences – that don't count.

Here's why:


	2. The First Time

The first time, he had almost died. (It's not an excuse or explanation for what happened, but is merely a fact.) She had almost watched him die right in front of her, helpless to stop it. (That's also a fact and still can't be construed as an excuse.) But when facts are put together, they begin to form pictures. And pictures can certainly be used for explanation, can't they?

Picture this: he almost died and she almost witnessed it, so was it really any wonder that he ended up on her front step late that night, hands shoved deep into his jeans pockets, eyes cast downward while he shuffled back and forth before her with a genuine awkwardness that usurped his usual feigned lack of balance? Moreover, was it any wonder that the moment she saw him, she wanted nothing more than to pull him inside, hold him close, and never let him go?

He was her best friend in the world. He was her partner in business (and sometimes in crime). Her confidant, her inspiration and – annoyingly – the reason she had begun to find more than a few gray hairs on her head since the day they'd formed The Lightman Group.

He'd almost died – and she'd almost witnessed it.

Those are still just facts, though. They provide context for the picture that's beginning to form.

Gillian knew before she even met Cal that he was the kind of person to whom danger had apparently attached a GPS tracker. (It didn't specifically say that in his Pentagon file, but all she had to do was read between the lines and, having done so, the only logical conclusion to reach was that either danger knew just where to find him or else he possessed the worst luck in the world.)

After she met him, the GPS tracker became the only plausible explanation.

The years that have elapsed since have done nothing to disabuse her of this notion either, but until that fateful morning – the morning that Eric Matheson walked into their foyer, pointed a gun at she and Cal, and proceeded to take every member of the staff hostage – she had operated under the (apparently false) assumption that danger would at least have the decency to stay out of their office space.

Danger and Cal Lightman had apparently moved beyond the tracker and forged a more familiar relationship without Gillian's knowledge.

It's probably post-traumatic stress that prevents her from remembering too much about that day, save for a handful of Polaroid-like images that she can't seem to shake: Cal stepping immediately in front of her when he saw Matheson's gun, the good-bye she could read so clearly in Cal's eyes when he told her to leave the lab while Matheson held that very same gun to the back of his head, and the cold emptiness that settled over her as Cal wordlessly handed her Matheson's confiscated pistol and staggered by her when it was over. He hadn't even allowed her hand to linger on her shoulder as she reached out when he passed.

To be honest, his sudden, silent departure frightened her more than any of the events of the day had because she had no idea how his pent-up anxieties would manifest themselves once he stepped into the cool DC night. While she knew that Torres would go home and hide in her shower for an hour or so to wash all remnants of the situation away and that Loker would end up getting a pleasant buzz on at a local bar (no doubt with Reynolds in tow after he finished with the FBI's questions and paperwork), Cal was always a wildcard when it came to coping mechanisms.

Sometimes he would handle it fine. He'd go straight home, break out the Scotch, and whip up a double batch of beans on toast before passing out in bed; other times, he'd end up on a plane to Atlantic City or Vegas to gamble with money instead of his life, staying away until he was suitably numb or until several large bouncers sent him home with bruised ribs and stern warnings never to return.

That night, Gillian feared he might be driven to do something more rash than a spontaneous Vegas trip (illegal street fighting sprang immediately to mind), but he'd vanished by the time she exited the lab. Exhausted and lacking any idea of how she would be able to help him, she had no choice but to go home, shower, throw on the semi-clean lounge pants hanging on the back of the bathroom door, and down half a pint of Ben and Jerry's in lieu of dinner. She kept her phone by her side, ready for a call from the hospital or the police about Cal and assumed that she should sleep on the couch in preparation to go get him whenever he finally surfaced.

Her spoon had just hit the cardboard at the bottom of the carton when she heard his knock.

Relief whooshed from her chest when she opened the door and saw that he was – relatively speaking – in one piece. The Matheson-inflicted wound on his left temple still looked ugly and he clearly hadn't taken any steps to treat it in the few hours since last she'd seen him, but he was otherwise unscathed from a physical standpoint.

Mentally, it was a different story.

Gillian instantly saw that it wasn't just the difference in height between her foyer and the stoop that made him appear smaller to her in that moment, it was the presence of an emotion that she rarely saw in him: realized fear. Cal Lightman didn't usually experience the sensation of fear. Being able to instantly ascertain truth and inner emotions simply by looking into people's faces gave him a feeling of confident – make that _arrogant_ – superiority in all social situations (whether violent or not) that normally negated any and all feelings of fear that another (_normal_) person might feel.

Matheson had rattled him, though. Matheson had reduced Cal Lightman to feeling like just another human being – and perhaps that rare fall into humanity and vulnerability was why the night unfolded like it did for him and for them.

At any rate, it paints a clear picture of how he ended up in Gillian's living room.

Eventually.

In typical Lightman fashion, he made three separate approaches before he came inside and _stayed_ inside. She watched the internal debate wage across his face in the shadows of the dim porch light; he was driving to a point, he'd come for a reason, but he had to work around all of his own protective walls in order to get there. She just needed to be patient and wait; he'd come to her. He always did.

Still, when he brought up the argument they'd been having that morning about the finances of The Lightman Group, she feared they might end up standing in her doorway all night – so she took out the smallest hammer in her arsenal to see if she could put the first tiny fissure in the Lightman wall herself and at least get him into the living room.

"Where's Emily?" she asked him.

The fissure she'd hoped for appeared – but quickly became a gaping crack when she realized that he hadn't even thought about his daughter yet. Anyone else probably would have missed the expression that flashed over his face, but Gillian knew what to look for and, when his eyelids dropped quickly as though to shut out the day's events once and for all, she knew he was about to quit the fight with himself.

"She's at her mum's," he told her. His tone grew far away when he added, "I haven't told them about all this yet…"

Fear. Loneliness. Shame. All three emotions washed over his face when he realized that he would be in the morning papers and he'd need to do damage control with Zoe and with Emily to keep them from worrying about him. But right now he looked too tired to do anything at all.

Even though she hoped he'd ask it, the question still caught her by surprise:

"Can I sleep in your spare bedroom tonight – if it's not too much of a problem?"

"Of course," she told him.

Finally he stepped decisively through her door and into her outstretched arms where she could feel his heartbeat thud in sync with her own and press her cheek to his un-bruised right temple. Though she couldn't see his face, she could feel his eyes close in relief as the muscles in his body slowly unclenched. And when they let go and kissed each other on the cheek, she felt her own muscles relax as well.

She realized as she locked the door behind him that it was the first time all day that she was no longer afraid.

"Oi, Gill – you call this dinner?" Cal's voice broke into her thoughts. It was slightly garbled by the mouthful of Phish Food he'd taken the liberty of helping himself to upon entering her kitchen.

"Because you probably had a healthy, balanced meal before you arrived?" she countered, bustling over and snatching her spoon out of his grasp before he could stick it back in the carton.

"Haven't eaten," he shrugged. Dropping his overcoat on the back of a chair, he reached into a nearby drawer and procured his own spoon.

In a tone that was a little more maternal than she meant for it to sound, Gillian asked, "Did you want me to make you something?"

"You got the fixings for beans on toast by chance?" he waggled his eyebrows at her hopefully, spoon held aloft.

"Toast, yes," she told him. "Beans, no."

"Pass the Ben and Jerry's then," was his response.

She chuckled, took another spoonful of her own, and slid the carton in front of him. They ate in companionable silence for a few moments before both spoons scraped the last of the ice cream from the container. It was while she was disposing of the trash and Cal was depositing the spoons in the sink that Gillian noticed she'd left the television on in the living room and that a late night showing of _Bringing Up Baby _was on.

"Oh, I love this movie," she said softly, chuckling as Katharine Hepburn inadvertently stole Cary Grant's car from him at the golf course.

"Cary Grant?" Cal's macro-expression suggested he was not a fan.

"What's wrong with Cary Grant?" Gillian turned to face him, arms crossed over her chest.

"You must be joking," he said. "You've heard him speak, haven't you? 'orrible accent, that. Just 'orrible."

The h's in "horrible" were dropped with much more force than he normally applied and Gillian nearly looked down to see if she needed to sweep them up from the floor.

"Well I happen to like Cary Grant," she told him, marching back into the kitchen to search her cupboards for some microwave popcorn. "And after the day we had, I don't think I can sleep yet. A screwball comedy is just the ticket – don't you think?"

"Can't we find a nice infomercial to watch instead?" Cal wheedled. "There's this really posh-looking food steamer…"

"My house, my movie," she responded with conviction.

Despite his protest, when the two of them settled onto the couch with the popcorn a few moments later, he did laugh his way through the movie with her, even falling into one of his rare (but legendary) giggle fits as Hepburn and Grant ended up neck-high in a river that Hepburn had sworn they could wade across.

"That's you an' me, Gill," he elbowed her teasingly, pointing at the screen.

"Not true!" she argued, then swatted him with a throw pillow as the giggles overwhelmed them both.

It was after that - sometime around the part when the comedic duo wound up in jail with a leopard - that Gillian felt the exhaustion begin to overwhelm her.

By then, the popcorn was gone and the bowl had been relegated to the coffee table. Cal had kicked off his beat-up Blundstone boots, his stocking-clad feet also having taken up residence on the coffee table while his right arm was stretched across the back of the sofa. Gillian was nestled against his right side, partially because they'd been sharing the popcorn and partially because it just didn't make sense for him to show up on her doorstep seeking comfort and for them to then occupy opposite sides of the sofa.

The entire scene was pleasant and domestic and Gillian hadn't realized that her eyes had closed and her head had come to rest on his shoulder until she heard him whisper, "Alright there, Gill?"

"Mm," was her vague response which, had she been capable of articulation, would probably have sounded more like, "Fine, thanks."

Just as softly, she heard him ask, "If you're falling asleep, then, you mind if I watch the infomercial?"

She had a smile on her face when sleep overtook her.

Sometime around 3:30 or 4:00 in the morning, she awoke and realized that, not only was she still on her couch, but she was now covered with an afghan and the pillow on which her head rested was the chest of a sleeping Cal Lightman. Their bodies were curled into each other so closely that she wasn't entirely sure which leg was hers and which was his and so forth.

She felt warm and safe and didn't want to move at that particular moment, however, so she didn't really _care_ which leg was hers.

Though Cal had turned out the lamp above their heads before nodding off himself, the television still illuminated its corner of the living room and – sure enough – the ridiculous food steamer infomercial was on. Again. (It did not look "posh" at all and Gillian was fairly certain that the spokesman hocking it had been on a different infomercial for some sort of car wax only a few weeks ago.) But when she lifted her head in a surreptitious effort to locate the remote control so she could silence it, she caught a glimpse of her best friend's profile and paused.

In the dim light from the television, Cal's face was relaxed and boyish. The fine lines of worry that marked a roadmap on his countenance when he was awake had melted away with sleep and he appeared completely at peace. After the events of the day, to see him now so serene took a weight off Gillian's mind.

They would be okay after this. (At least until the next thing happened, of course. Danger wasn't going to leave Cal Lightman alone for long, unfortunately.) But that night he was in her home, on her sofa, and he was at peace.

She reached gently across him, secured the remote control, and switched the television off.

"I was watching that," Cal muttered when the room was bathed in darkness and Gillian's head had once again come to rest on his chest.

"No you weren't," she countered softly. "You were sleeping."

"Fine," he sighed, shifting slightly beneath her, his arms holding her just a bit tighter. "But just so you know, in the morning, I'm telling everyone we slept together."

"You do that," she mumbled, half on her way back to sleep again.

And even though he ultimately didn't tell anyone, it wouldn't have been a lie. They _had_ slept together that night. Literally. And the literal part was why it didn't count.

For similar reasons, the second time they slept together didn't count either – but it required a lot more explanation in the morning.

Perhaps if it hadn't involved a bed - _his_ bed...

TBC


	3. The Second Time

**Author's Note –** Okay, we're going to have to go with four chapters for this story, folks. I really didn't plan it this way and I have an extreme aversion to stories that waffle on for too long, but I'm having too much fun at the moment and the characters are giving me too much to work with! One more should get it done. Promise.

_Couple of plot notes_: While I'm not certain that Cal would use the stone as a unit of measure conversationally (in particular when speaking with his very American daughter), I did it here because he uses so many other British terms that I can't believe he wouldn't. I am, however, quite confident that he would refer to articles of clothing as "kit," ergo, you'll find that below as well. Meanwhile, despite getting to make those particular choices, I still don't own the characters. Or the episodes. Or anything worth suing me over. Trust me on that.

Feedback goes below. Cheers!

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><p>For the record, the second time was his idea. (Well - more accurately - staying at his house was <em>his<em> idea. Sharing the bed was _her_ idea. So really, they were both to blame.)

Of course, it's not like the second time counted any more than the first one did.

Here's why:

The second time, the floor had just fallen out of her world (and the ceiling was much the worse for wear). In fact, the floor had fallen out of her world with such sudden and shocking force that she shattered right in front of him, causing him to fear for the first time that he wouldn't be able to get all of the pieces back together.

In fact, he'd never really tried to put the pieces – of _anything_ – back together before and this seemed like a hell of a time to make a start.

Fixing things wasn't exactly his strong suit. (Zoe, in particular, would be happy to testify to that.) Cal was far more adept at tossing matters into the air to see if he could break them apart (or make them explode) and study the ways in which they disintegrated on impact. The task of assembly (or re-assembly) after he had done so fell to Gillian; thus, in his world, when everything went pear shaped, Gillian was the one he called for help. She always knew what to do, what to say, and could always discern which of the jumbled, broken, or distorted pieces of a particular puzzle needed to go in the middle and which made up the edges and corners. An expert puzzler was Gillian Foster – and what's more, she made it look easy.

Role reversal scared him to death – so much so that he barely knew where to begin.

Fear has, of course, caused lesser men to do crazier things, so it's certainly easy to understand how they wound up in bed together. (That is, of course, an explanation more than a fact.) But because Cal Lightman lives for seeing through explanations and has been known to twist the facts conveniently in order to suit his purposes, it's fitting to examine all of the circumstances that surround the second time they slept together – beginning with the facts.

Fact number one: It started with a phone call.

He stood in his dining room, torn between an overwhelming urge to throw his daughter's latest boyfriend Willie (_"Liam_, Dad!") out on his ear for being _seemingly_ perfect and non-threatening (therefore making him far more dangerous than previous boys she'd brought home) and a counter-desire to choke said beloved daughter for making a calculated move to get a rise out of him where young Liam was concerned. (That he came home and found them both on the dining room floor "stretching" after a run and that she knew it bothered him and played it up only added fuel to the fire.)

Fact number two: He was on the verge of double homicide when his phone rang.

"You have _no_ idea how happy I am you called, Foster."

He meant it. He really did. Not only had she probably just saved two young lives (and kept Cal himself out of prison – again), but she had called in the middle of one of those instances when he really could use her puzzle assembling abilities. (This particular puzzle came out of a box marked "Teenage Daughters and the Fathers Who Fail to Understand Them." It was three-dimensional and all of the pieces were variations on the same color.)

The smile in his voice lasted but a breath. An instant later, he froze when he realized that the rambling, disjointed words landing in his ears came from the lips of the very same Gillian Foster who had, just an hour before, criticized his blunt approach to a case involving her former patient, Claire. They'd argued, then bickered and bantered their way into a stalemate so that, before they parted, the last thing she'd said to him was, "Oh now you're just being silly."

He'd laughed at her cheek – but he wasn't laughing at the tearful, childlike Gillian on the phone who mentioned something about a dead body and begged him to come and get her.

"Slow down, darling," he intoned, halfway to the door before he realized he was in motion.

He broke more than a dozen traffic laws on his way to Claire's apartment, double-parked when he got there, and tried not to panic when he saw the assortment of ambulances and police cruisers in the lot. Gillian was fine, right? She had, after all, just called him on the phone. He'd heard her voice.

Sod that. He'd heard her voice. Gillian wasn't fine at all.

Still, he managed to keep to a walk as he neared the crime scene - a walk that lasted right up until he saw her. More accurately, he saw the blood streaking the front of her shirt and her hands and his heart stopped. In the same moment, however, his feet fell into a dead sprint to her side, eyes assessing the situation to make sure that none of the scarlet staining was hers.

She rambled to him the same way she had on the phone. "I was too late…"

He barely heard her at first, deafened by the whoosh of his own blood thudding in his ears, a whoosh that signaled the flow returning to his extremities when he realized that she was physically unscathed.

She continued to explain why she was there, as though reciting a rehearsed speech. "I just came… came by to check on her…"

Her eyes darted back and forth, seeing him stand before her - but not really seeing him at all. It seemed somehow important to her that she finish what she was saying, so he let her continue while he pulled off his jacket and wrapped it around her shaking shoulders. "I was trying to save her…"

He couldn't listen to any more: "Come here, darling."

He pulled her close and a tiny "Thank you" squeaked from her lips as she buried her tear-streaked face in his shoulder, a voice that reminded him of the way Emily sounded when she was six and had skinned her knees. (Of course, when Emily had skinned knees at the age of six, he knew exactly what to do to make her feel better. This situation went far beyond skinned knees.)

It took everything he had not to just stay in that hallway and hang onto Gillian for the rest of the night. But even though it would have made them both feel better, it wouldn't have solved the problem at hand, so once her breathing had steadied somewhat and she seemed strong enough, he settled her onto an empty bench in the hallway and went into the apartment to assess the situation.

Claire's body lay in a pool of blood with a scarf that he recognized as Gillian's cast to the side, evidence of his friend's futile effort to try to save the young woman – and, frustrated by what he deemed to be the slow effort of the officers on the scene, he made a decision. Despite the fact that Gillian would hate it - but likewise cognizant that it was the best option available to him on short notice - he called Wallowski. She wasn't on duty (in fact, she had a date, which he knew), but he didn't care. The only fact he was concerned with at the moment was that Gillian was broken and he needed to fix her.

Since fixing wasn't his forte, he would need help.

Wallowski's arrival, then, helped him in two ways – the first expected and the second surprising. He had anticipated that the pace of the crime scene investigators would pick up when she appeared (her presence always had that effect on them – a fact that amused Cal to no end). What surprised him was that her entrance revealed the exact extent of the damage Claire's murder had done to Gillian. Despite an exasperated roll of the eyes and the way she spat the words "You called _her_?" when Wallowski inquired after her status, Gillian didn't turn up her nose at the detective's presence like she normally would have. Her jaw didn't clench and her eyes didn't give the usual flash of mistrust and disdain that she usually reserved for her encounters with the other woman.

That there seemed to be no fight left in her was bad – _very_ bad.

To her credit, Wallowski recognized the lack of open hostility in Foster for what it was – a sign of traumatic shock - and treated her gently through the process of taking her statement and getting her fingerprints so as to separate them from any others obtained at the scene. That gentle touch, of course, didn't transfer to Cal when he tried to help her go after the right suspect.

"You need to take Foster home," Wallowski told him in an effort to avoid confrontation – which, of course, prompted him into an argument that lasted until she broke it off by walking away.

Any other day, he would have followed her into the interrogation room and continued the fight for what he clearly saw to be the truth of the matter. But it wasn't any other day and Gillian needed to be looked after. As his eyes came to rest on her – seated opposite Wallowski's desk, still engulfed in Cal's big black overcoat, cheeks tear-streaked while she absently played with papers that lay before her - he realized that he needed to be the one to look after her.

(Where was that master level guide to assembling jigsaw puzzles when he needed it?)

"Can we go now?" she asked when he approached.

"Home?" he responded expectantly. He calculated that she would need a change of clothes, a shower, and at least a pint of Ben and Jerry's to even begin to take the edge off.

"_Seriously_?"

The glint in her eye had returned – he wasn't sure when exactly – and when she stood, she was tall again. Sometime between finalizing her statement with Wallowski and him stepping away, the fight had come back into Gillian Foster.

"That's my girl," he tried not to grin openly as he put a hand on her shoulder and guided her out of the precinct.

It wouldn't last long, he knew. Exhaustion from the horror of the evening's events would hit her hard the moment this sudden burst of adrenaline wore off, but that didn't mean that they couldn't strike while the iron was hot and go after Claire's killer themselves. After feeling helpless to aid his best friend for the last couple of hours, Cal Lightman planned to enjoy toying with the Internet whiz kid whom he and Gillian both knew was guilty of the crime.

He was going to _thoroughly_ enjoy it, in fact.

As far as he was concerned, by making a choice that hurt Gillian and resulted in the murder of an innocent young woman, Zach Morestein had declared personal war on Cal himself. So when they confronted the emotionless computer programmer and he heard himself tell Morestein: "Every genius has his weakness, _genius,_" he quickly realized that he was actually referring to both of them – the technological prodigy _and_ the face-reading expert – and, more importantly, he had every intention of making Morestein pay for his crimes.

It was just too bad that murder was out of the question or he was tempted to take care of the matter right then and there. But Foster wouldn't have stood for it and the last thing he wanted to do that night was let her down.

Fact number three: He wouldn't hear of her staying anywhere but his house.

Her place was too quiet - too still - and Cal couldn't bear the thought of leaving her there alone. Likewise, with Emily and Liam occupying his dining room (and probably other parts of his house) in a very suspicious and hormonal manner before he'd left, he couldn't justify staying at Gillian's house with her either, so the only logical conclusion was that Gillian should come home with him, thereby giving her company in the house and keeping him (once more) from killing two supposedly innocent teenagers. After all, his spare bedroom was free. She could sleep there.

(At least, that was the plan.)

Luckily Emily – having phoned Cal in concern at least three times since his sudden departure – had put everything in order by the time the pair arrived. Liam had been sent home, the teapot whistled from the stovetop, and, though she should already have been in bed as it was just past eleven on a school night, she had waited up to find out exactly what was going on.

"Dad, wha-?" was all that escaped her confused lips as she saw the pair of them step through the kitchen door, Cal's overcoat hanging open on Gillian's frame to reveal the blood-soaked green t-shirt beneath.

"How 'bout a cuppa, Em?" Cal cut her off with a look. "Lemon for me and honey for Gillian."

He pulled out a chair at the dining room table and helped Gillian take a seat, then brushed a gentle hand across her cool cheek as he bustled quickly back into the kitchen to assist Emily.

"Don't ask questions, love," he muttered to her, taking the bottle of honey out of the cupboard and placing it onto the tray she was preparing with the tea things. "Gillian's had a rough night and she's going to stay here, alright?"

"Okay," Emily nodded quickly. "I just… Is she…?"

"I'll explain everything in the morning," he cut her off again. "Right now, do you think you can run upstairs and kit her out with some pajamas for tonight?"

"I probably have something," Emily told him helpfully.

"What? All three stone of you?" he teased her despite the grim mood he'd brought home. Nothing in Emily's closet was larger than a size four, which mean that, despite a workout regimen that kept her junk food habit at bay, Gillian would never fit comfortably into anything the skinny teen owned. "Better check my closet."

"I hope she likes black, then," Emily shot back and Cal snaked a quick arm around her shoulders to press his lips to her forehead, grateful for her presence.

She hugged him back, but when she moved away to head for the stairs, there was real concern in her eyes that was clearly for him alone. Before she could say anything, he told her, "I'm all right, love. Just run up and see what you can find, will you?"

As her feet hit the bottom step, he added, "Oi, Em – grab some extra towels as well. Gill will want a shower."

"On it," she agreed.

"You really don't have to go to all this trouble…" Gillian's voice had regained its small, childlike quality when she finally spoke and he hurried over with the tea tray.

"All what trouble, darling?" he asked her softly, sitting in the chair next to hers and putting a gentle, restraining hand on her forearm. "I always have tea at this hour – what's one extra cup?"

"You know what I mean, Cal," she told him more firmly. "I can stay at my place tonight, it's really no -"

"You're staying here," he interrupted her. "I won't hear any arguments about it."

Her eyes met his and locked and he swallowed hard when he saw that now there really was no fight left in her – not even for him. Exhaustion had replaced it and he hoped at the very least to get the tea into her empty stomach before she nodded off at the table.

It was an hour later - after the tea had been drunk, Emily had been shuttled off to bed, and Cal had sent Gillian into the bathroom for a shower – that the same exhaustion finally hit him. He headed into his own room, closed the door behind him, and sat down on the edge of the bed, head cradled in his hands while he wondered how they would come back from this. Would Gillian be able to recover, or was the personal nature of this case going to be too much for her?

And if she didn't recover, what was _he_ going to do?

From the bathroom, he heard the steady thrum of the shower and glanced absently at the clock. He planned to give her another thirty minutes before he would be concerned enough to pull Emily out of bed and send her in. In the meantime, he exchanged his jeans and sweater for the West Ham pajama bottoms Emily had purchased for him the previous Christmas and a threadbare Einstein t-shirt that she'd been threatening to throw away every time she did the laundry. ("But Em, I only just got it broken in!") He had just checked the clock again – fifteen minutes from sending Emily in now – and finished marking three pages of his manuscript draft (by hand, as his daughter-induced laptop ban was still in effect) when the water ceased.

He put down his red pen, sat the manuscript on the nightstand, and pulled off his glasses. Then he waited. He waited for exactly the extra fifteen minutes he'd allotted for her shower before he allowed the concern of not hearing any sounds of life in the bathroom to bring him to his bunny slipper-clad feet and pad into the hallway. Outside the closed door, he paused, leaned in, and listened.

Silence.

Wait, not silence at all – soft, muffled sobs emerged through the oak and sliced into his already pierced heart.

"Bloody hell," he muttered, then shot a quick glance at Emily's closed door while he debated fleetingly if he should send her in rather than go in himself.

No. This wasn't Emily's job. Gillian wasn't Emily's best friend; she was his.

"Gillian?" he said softly to the door. When no response came, he added, "Gill, you'd better be decent 'cause I'm coming in."

There was no protest from inside so he turned the knob and let himself in. She was seated on the floor with her back against the shower door, fully clad (thankfully) in a pair of his old navy blue sweats and a battered Oxford University t-shirt, tears streaming once more down her cheeks and her fingers tangled in her own wet hair.

She looked up at him with such helplessness that he nearly lost it himself.

Swallowing hard, he knelt beside her and put a steadying hand on her shoulder. "Come on, love. Can't stay here all night."

"I couldn't save her this time," Gillian told him. "I tried. You know that? I tried _so_ hard."

She continued to ramble while he pulled her gently to her feet, pulling her into his chest and feeling her lean her weight into him. "I know you tried, darling. I know it. Claire knows it too."

He maneuvered her into the hall, switched off the bathroom light behind them, and was a mere shift of the weight away from steering her toward the spare bedroom next to Emily's room when Gillian said it.

"You were the only one," she told him. "When I saw she was gone, you were the only one I could think of who could help me…"

Fact number four: He couldn't possibly leave her alone after she said _that_.

He shifted their shared weight in the opposite direction – toward his bedroom – and seated her on the edge of his bed. It wasn't a conscious decision that he made; it was more instinctual than that. His room was more alive than the spare room; it was dotted with an assortment of family pictures – of Emily mostly – and scenic views he'd shot while doing research in exotic locales, all of which was far more welcoming (comforting) than the mishmash of objects that were scattered haphazardly around the rarely-used spare room. In fact, the most use that the extra room saw was the foot traffic of Emily and her girlfriends ever since she'd taken over the closet space in there as an extension of the overflowing one in her own bedroom.

Of course, now that he had Gillian in his bedroom and seated on his bed, what _was_ he going to do with her?

Chewing his bottom lip nervously, he sat beside her and peered into her face.

She stared at the floor and they sat side by side in silence for a moment that seemed to stretch an hour. In fact, he feared she may have gone catatonic until she finally broke the silence to ask a question he never expected: "Are you wearing _bunny_ slippers?"

Caught completely off guard, he paused for an extra beat to come up with a response – a response which, in true Lightman fashion, was designed to deflect and deter: "You've had a hard night, you know, and hallucination is typical in these situations…"

Her eyes met his and, as on the night they'd slept on her couch after the Eric Matheson incident, the pair ultimately dissolved into companionable giggles, heads falling together as their shoulders shook in unison. She laughed until she cried again and he felt tears come to his own eyes but it was a necessary release of the tension they'd carried with them all night. When they finally caught their breath, she put a hand on his shoulder, looked him in the eye, and asked with sincerity, "Are you going to tell everyone that I propositioned you if I ask to sleep in here tonight?"

"Aye, aye, shepherd's pie," he nodded without hesitation, leaning close and winking at her flirtatiously – all of which earned him a gentle shove that he pretended had wielded enough force to knock him sideways. The laughing fit had put them back into their usual conversational rhythm once more.

Gillian's face grew solemn then. "Thank you, Cal. For everything."

"Anything for you, love," he told her and meant it.

"I really would like to sleep in here if that's okay," she added, a hint of nervousness behind her gaze.

"I know," he nodded quickly. "And it is. Okay, I mean." He paused a beat, then added, "It's okay if I sleep here too, isn't it? You know, my room and all…?"

Her withering look was his answer as she crawled between the sheets.

"Right then." He followed suit and switched off the light as she moved to curl into his side, just as she had when they shared her couch.

"I do need one favor from you, though, Gillian," he whispered in the dark, pressing a kiss onto the top of her head as they settled in for the night.

"Mm," was her drowsy response, head coming to rest on his chest.

"I'm going to need you to be the one to explain this to Em in the morning," he said.

"Okay, but then you have to explain the slippers to _me_," she countered.

"Deal," he chuckled as sleep overwhelmed them both.

Of course, when he told her about explaining matters to Emily, he intended it as a joke. Gillian likewise understood it the same way. But it didn't turn out that way in the morning.

And explaining the circumstances surrounding the second time they slept together naturally led to an explanation of the first time – neither of which counted. Cal and Gillian were very clear on that point. Since the sleeping together in question was _literal_, it did not count. At all.

Emily, however, disagreed.

TBC


	4. The Third Time

**Author's Note:** As I post the final, concluding chapter to this tale, I must give credit where it's due. It was my good friend LW who coined the term "cuddly sleeper" and who allowed me to use it here. It was the wonderful writers employed by FOX who created these characters and who have agreed (oh-so-generously) not to sue me for borrowing them. And, finally, it was the useless Nielsen and network honchos who canceled the show. (To quote Lightman himself: "Bunch of plonkers!") Still, the stories live on here.

For those who have reviewed and supported so far, thank you! (The bunny slippers reappear here just for you.) Want to share thoughts on the conclusion? Click that little tabby do at the bottom. Cheers!

* * *

><p>Just to be clear (in case there is any lingering doubt), the first and second times that Cal and Gillian slept together, they <em>slept<em> together. That's all. Yes, there were two people with two bodies and four hands between them, but there was no inappropriate touching of any kind. Four eyelids? Closed over unconscious eyes. Completely platonic.

It was _sleeping_ together, not "sleeping" together. Got it?

Yet no matter how many ways Cal and Gillian explained it to a ready-for-school Emily (and her suspicious facial expression – one that Cal observed made her look more like her mother than ever) the next morning, she clearly wasn't buying their logic or their carefully crafted arguments.

Cal ultimately concluded that, for a supposedly forward-thinking teenager who had already misplaced her own virginity in (what he still hoped was just) a thoughtless accident, she was being very closed-minded on the matter.

Sure, it _looked_ suspicious and - to be fair - if he had been the one in the standing at the kitchen island sipping orange juice while Emily and Willie ("_Liam_, Dad!") came downstairs in a similar state of rumpled haziness to the one that Cal and Gillian arrived in, he would have hit the ceiling in no time flat. (In fact, he probably would have blasted himself all the way through the ceiling, the roof, and wound up back in London.) But Emily was a teenager and he and Gillian were adults and that should have been enough to end the conversation right there, full stop.

(If she had been anyone but the daughter of a high-powered attorney and a human lie detector, they probably could have too.)

What was probably the most unsettling part of the whole thing, however, was that, while she clearly believed that more than just sleep had occurred in his bedroom the previous night, Emily wasn't upset about it. She didn't even debate the shades of gray surrounding the idea of "sleeping together." In fact, it was the strangest argument Cal had ever had with his daughter – or anyone, for that matter. She wasn't disappointed in him or angry at the two of them. She wasn't betrayed, ashamed, or even seemingly surprised. Instead, she was rather matter-of-fact about both the situation and her disbelief that it was "just sleep, Em." So instead of having a traditional father-teenage daughter argument with screaming and arm waving and door slamming the way people did on television, they simply talked.

And in the end, Cal and Gillian could see that Emily left for school still believing that both times counted – which meant that he then spent the better part of the morning attempting to figure out where it had all gone wrong. How could Emily (who was usually quite logical and sensible) not understand that sometimes it was just impossible for people to sleep alone? Some people slept better with someone there to hold onto them and vice versa.

Cal, in particular, was what Zoe had always referred to as "a cuddly sleeper." (Actually, she'd referred to him early in their relationship as a "_horrifically_ cuddly sleeper." By the end of their marriage, she'd shortened it to, "Don't touch me.") He couldn't help it, though – noted for a significant lack of respect for personal boundaries when he was awake, he was practically a human creeper vine when asleep. It was an unconscious behavior (literally), but it made for some occasional awkwardness in his marriage because Zoe was the antithesis of a cuddly sleeper – a fact which Cal later realized was probably the first nail in the coffin of their entire relationship. (He really should have seen the end coming on the morning he woke up hugging a pillow that she'd slipped between the two of them to serve as a buffer).

And to think all of the so-called experts said that opposites attracted.

Gillian, as it had lately turned out, was likewise a cuddly sleeper. (Perhaps even horrifically so.) Though she wasn't quite creeper vine level like Cal was, there was a certain tenacity in her unconscious latching – and an added peacefulness to both of their sleep patterns when her limbs were tangled with his.

It's rather funny, really. There is a certain level of intimacy required for two people to sleep together in the literal sense – perhaps even more so than is required for them to sleep together in a more Biblical fashion. (Cal and Zoe never had any problems with _that_ part of their relationship, to be sure - before, during, and even after the collapse of their marriage.) But sleep compatibility is on a whole different plane altogether. It requires that the two people involved be absolutely comfortable with one another. They must find complementary body positions, achieve the same breathing rhythm, and reach the same approximate body temperature so as to remain comfortable for an extended period of time.

The two times they slept together (neither of counted in the traditional sense, of course), Cal and Gillian discovered they were capable of all three.

Despite the individual traumas that precipitated both instances of said shared slumber, in the morning when they awoke – legs intertwined, her head on his chest, their arms wrapped cocoon-like around one another – both ultimately concluded that they felt rested. There was no awkwardness in their friendship or their working relationship even though they'd clearly crossed the line that Gillian held in such esteem. (Apparently trauma trumped the line – a fact for which both were glad.) What's more, during the night there were no strange nightmares, no night sweats or instances of recalling the horrible incidents as vividly as if they were happening all over again that tended to happen under such circumstances. There was just a peaceful blanket of sleep that enveloped them, a blissful amnesia that allowed them to begin the recovery process.

But there was no explaining that to Emily, who preferred to draw her own conclusions.

So when Cal's (once again) bunny slipper-clad feet padded down the stairs just after 7:00 the next morning - Gillian close on his heels and both wearing identical versions of black crewneck sweaters out of Cal's closet to ward off the morning chill – the teen took a final swig of her juice, deposited the glass in the sink, picked up her school bag, and quirked one carefully shaped eyebrow in their direction:

"Sleep well, guys?"

From behind not-yet-caffeinated eyes, Cal's retort was hardly a retort at all, just dry and lacking in sincerity: "Very well. Thank you for your concern, love."

"Mm-hmm," she said, eyes flashing with a mixture of interest and pure, unadulterated "gotcha."

She stood between Cal, Gillian, and the coffee pot – a dangerous place to be – and Cal felt himself lurch toward her with a somewhat threatening step before Gillian's hand caught his shoulder to stop his forward momentum.

Emily continued to stare them both down fearlessly.

"Is there something you'd like to share with the class then?" Cal asked his daughter, head tilted sideways as he peered directly into her eyes while he challenged her to ask the question so clearly on her mind. (Even lack of caffeine couldn't suppress his ability to read her face when it was so legible.)

"Nope," she replied quickly, her stance indicating a lie but her face clearly telling both adults that she was willing to overlook all appearances of impropriety – no doubt in exchange for a favor to be named at a later date.

Gillian spoke at last. "Thank you for making the coffee, Emily."

"You're welcome," Emily told her sincerely – clearly mindful of Gillian's terrible state the night before – then, with a sly look in her father's direction, added, "I figured you guys could use it – you know, 'cause it was a long night and all…"

With the question now hanging openly in the air, Cal stayed true to character and quickly decided to shoot right past non-defensive explanations, march himself up to the coffee pot, and announce in a voice brighter than his rumpled state belied, "I didn't have sex with Gillian, Em. We shared a bed last night. End of story. Aren't you late for school?"

Gillian's sharp intake of breath indicated that, while she'd seen his off-handed remarks coming, they'd still struck a chord with her.

Emily looked directly at her as though for confirmation of his tale – and Gillian's usual professional veneer slipped.

"I… I didn't really want to be alone last night, you know?" Gillian told her, fumbling. "It wasn't anything… It was... It was like the last time…"

Emily's eyes widened in shock for the first time all morning and her head whipped back around to look at Cal to gauge his reaction – which, as it turned out, was merely to wipe a tired hand across his eyes and into his pillow-squashed hair with resignation. He very obviously had not wanted the conversation to veer into this particular territory.

"You guys slept together before?" Emily appeared to be stifling something between a laugh, a yelp, and a separate, sarcastic comment.

"We slept together," Cal said succinctly, sliding a full mug across the kitchen island to Gillian before filling his own. "We did not _sleep_ together. There were two times – last time and one time before that. That's all. Got it?"

"It's not like it counts," was all Gillian could think of to add and Cal gave her a withering glare that clearly said, "Not helping."

To Emily, he asked with more brightness than he felt, "Should you still be here or should you be off by now?"

"I'm going," she grinned at him in a manner that was nothing short of victorious. She turned and headed for the back door.

She was closing it behind her when he added, "Oi – we're tellin' the truth, Em!"

"If you say so," was her noncommittal response as she vanished.

Cal turned to Gillian and leaned back against the counter. "'_It's not like it counts_?' What the bloody hell was _that_?"

Gillian shook her head, clearly embarrassed. "I have no idea. It was all I could think of to say at the time."

"The sensible one, the one who's good on the spot and she comes up with 'It's not like it counts,'" he muttered absently to himself as he sipped his coffee, brain still wrapped up in thought. Then to her, he said, "I tell you what, though - I must be having an off morning, Foster, because I have no idea if she believed us or not."

Gillian admitted to equal confusion. "I couldn't tell either."

"She didn't seem upset," he mused. "No markers for anything like anger or betrayal that I could see."

"Me neither," Gillian concurred, the caffeine slowly putting her back on her game and the scientific conversation assuaging both of any lingering embarrassment they felt over the morning's topic of conversation.

Cal sighed and continued to sip his coffee. "Then I'm _really_ having an off morning because I have no idea what that even means."

He began to piece it together, of course. In characteristic Lightman fashion, his brain refused to let go of the question, instead preferring to grab it by the jugular and wrestle it into submission while he simultaneously helped Wallowski unravel the mystery surrounding Claire's murder. (And they said men couldn't multitask!)

Of course, Wallowski didn't exactly see Cal's inserting himself into the middle of what had now become _her_ investigation (thanks to him, ironically) as helping, per se. _Interfering_ was probably a better word for it, judging by the expression on her face when he wandered into Claire's apartment, saw her examining the bloodstain on the wooden floor, and asked, "So, what're you looking for _Detective_?"

She told him: "Some people read faces, I read crime scenes."

It was a dig but he let it go and proceeded to wander over to Claire's sofa while Wallowski examined the opposite wall for clues. Spotting an overturned photo on the end table, he gave a small smile, shoved his hands deep into his pockets, then flopped himself dramatically backward onto the couch, lower limbs flailing loosely on impact.

"You read this yet, _Detective_?"

She approached, noted the photo, then shook her head, confused.

"How do you reckon Grandma ended up face down by the sofa?" he wanted to know, tone coy.

Wallowski shrugged. "Knocked over in the struggle."

Slightly disappointed in her sudden lack of ability to "read a crime scene," Cal resorted to reinactment. He grabbed the detective's lapels and jerked her forward onto his lap as though suddenly overcome with romantic feeling.

"Wha-?" Wallowski yelped in surprise. "Okay…"

Her face changed then and Cal caught something behind her eyes – attraction that she was trying to hide and, amusing thought that was, such a response clearly indicated she still wasn't on the same page with him as far as the investigation was concerned.

The look was like catnip to him, however, and he decided to play it out:

"What?" he feigned shock and embarrassment. "In the middle of a crime scene? Foster'd kill me."

"Not if you don't tell her," the veil in front of Wallowski's eyes dropped and Cal felt himself swallow hard all of a sudden.

Hers was certainly an unexpected reaction... More importantly, though, how had Foster's name even come into it in the first place? Where had _that_ come from?

"Seriously?" he asked her, dubious.

"Are you smoking crack?" she retorted, her tone a verbal slap to the back of his head.

He faltered a bit, mind still stuck on how he had brought up Foster in the middle of everything. Since when did Gillian (or rather, the idea of her) have any bearing on who he propositioned?

"Right. Yeah. No…? Yeah," the words tumbled over the top of each other before he regained his composure and returned to his reconstruction of the murder scene. "Bear with me – you're gonna love this one."

He grabbed her lapels again and pulled her into kissing range. Looking deeply into her eyes, he told her, "You're Claire."

Wallowski looked at him, then to the photo, and back to him. Realization dawned: "Claire had sex before she was killed."

"Oh my God you're good," he said sarcastically.

"Don't I know it," she told him slyly, the attraction flickering again in her eyes. She paused, then leaned in closer, breathed deeply, and whispered, "Let go of my jacket, Lightman."

"Right then," he grinned, releasing her and then finding his own feet.

But all the way back to the office, all he could think of was Gillian.

To a certain degree, it was natural, he supposed. It was her former client and friend who had been murdered and, because something bad had happened to Gillian, it had therefore happened to Cal too. They had a murderer to catch. That was what The Lightman Group helped law enforcement agencies do – and he and Gillian _were_ The Lightman Group, no matter what that plonker Loker thought. So to be at the crime scene working on a case that was personal to Gillian meant that she was foremost in his mind. That was all.

It had nothing to do with them sleeping together, of course. It couldn't. After all, it had happened twice now and neither time counted.

Still, after Emily's reaction that morning and then the strange encounter with Wallowski, Cal was beginning to doubt even his own assertions on the matter.

Now, if everything he felt was tied to Claire's murder, then catching Zach Morestein and sending him off to jail should have ended it. In fact, Cal figured it probably would. They'd get Morestein arrested and he and Gillian could go back to normal. The line would return, they'd sleep in their own beds at night, and that would be the end of it. And then he could go back to flirting with whatever women he wanted and Gillian's name wouldn't come up anymore.

But it didn't work that way this time. Catching Morestein wasn't enough to end it for Gillian - and because it didn't end for her, it didn't end for Cal either. He stood in Gillian's office doorway, watched the expression on her face as she pulled a child's beaded necklace out of a box, and realized that this time, catching the bad guy wasn't enough. It wasn't even enough to sit down on the sofa, put an arm around her while she told the story of her relationship with Claire as a child, and reassure her again that she'd done the right thing.

But it was a start.

Later, Cal tried to find closure by making a few phone calls, then visiting Morestein in the lock up to tell him about the arrangements he'd made for the young murderer on Gillian's behalf. Instead of prison, Morestein would be sent upstate to a mental hospital where, Cal explained, Morestein would be treated differently: "Now, prison will only take your freedom. But that hospital – the pills they give you – they'll take your mind. Make no mistake: _Doctor_ Foster will make sure of that. Personally."

But, satisfying though that was (and he enjoyed it quite a lot), by the time he reached home that night, he still couldn't get Gillian out of his mind, nor could he excise the image of Emily's facial expression when she'd watched the two of them come downstairs together. He'd expected disbelief or embarrassment to wash over the teen's face – but not _acceptance_. Not _delight._ And the more he recalled the moment and realized what he'd seen, the more he realized that Emily was actually _happy_ with her conclusion that he and Gillian had slept together.

Moreover, she wasn't through with the conversation that had started in the kitchen in the morning. He'd thought maybe she would let it go, but as they sat side by side on the couch after dinner, the words, "I have a question" indicated he couldn't have been more wrong.

"Uh-oh - what's that look mean?" he was instantly suspicious. True to her DNA, Emily never just "asked a question" – there was always subtext to her line of inquiry, no matter how seemingly innocent she started off.

"Gillian." Yep, here it came: "Do you love her?"

It was a fair question, to be sure, but it was also one loaded for bear.

Still, he couldn't lie. And he decided quickly that he wouldn't. Besides, the situation didn't call for it.

"Of course I do, darling," he told her, using his best reassuring father tone in an effort to smooth the whole thing over. "Of course I love her."

"No," Emily shook her head. He could tell that she wasn't going to allow for smoothing - her brain had the same pit bull mentality that his did and she had this particular question by the throat. "I mean _really_ love her."

He looked away then because she had lobbed this question right into the heart of him and he knew he couldn't brush it away. And when it landed deep inside and registered, he realized what had happened in the kitchen that morning and what had happened in Claire's apartment with Wallowski, then later in Gillian's office were all part of the same puzzle. Not being a puzzle assembling expert, of course, it had taken until this moment for Cal to realize that he was holding the last two pieces in his hands and just needed to snap them into place:

He'd slept with Gillian twice and neither time counted. But what he had only just realized (with a little teenage prompting) was that he wanted it to count. He wanted her there all the time and wanted sleeping with her to count for something – for _everything_. In fact, he didn't want to sleep without her anymore if he didn't have to.

_Bloody hell._ What a picture that turned out to be!

It was a long moment before he was able to give Emily an answer to her question. His voice was soft when he did: "Yeah."

Again, there was no surprise on her face, only acceptance – and maybe a touch of concern for him, for his happiness. She moved closer, curled into his side, and asked, "Then what are you waiting for?"

Once again, he allowed the question to register and, this time, instead of one answer coming into his mind, he was flooded with possibilities. _She's my best friend – I can't lose that. She's too good for me. She's drawn a line and we're not allowed to cross it. I'm terrible at relationships. She's terrible at relationships. We're terrible at being friends half the time. We'd kill each other. I drive her crazy. She drives me crazy. We drive __**other**__ people crazy when we're together._

He finally told Emily, "I don't have an answer to that one, love," rather than admit that he suddenly had too many answers and was afraid to admit the truth – that, having realized that sleeping alone no longer held any appeal for him and that there was only one person he wanted to sleep with ever again, he had no idea how to go about remedying the situation.

He needed a puzzle-assembling expert. _Again._

Emily clearly concurred. She sat forward and looked him in the eye: "If I were you, Dad, I'd start to work on one."

"What would I do without you to run my life for me, Em?" he changed the tone of the conversation to teasing and she grinned, allowing him to deflect the subject at last.

"It's a good thing I'm here," she told him, "because when you're old, I'll put you in a really nice retirement home."

"What? I don't get to live with you?" he protested. "That's a knife right through my heart, Em. That's cold, that is."

She chuckled and kissed his cheek. "I'm going to bed. We can negotiate some more on your future care in the morning."

"It'd better be someplace posh," he said to her retreating back as she headed upstairs. "Lots of nurses at my beck and call." A pause, then he added, "Good-looking ones!"

The house fell silent as she vanished into her room and he took his time shutting off the downstairs lights. It was nearly eleven and the hum of the refrigerator echoed emptily through the kitchen as he rinsed a tea mug absently at the sink, then moved to lock the back door. It was as he did so that he noticed a set of headlights sweeping across the driveway – an occurrence that, after the events of the past few days, made him instantly suspicious.

A quick listen upstairs revealed nothing but silence from Emily's room, so he cautiously opened the door and peered into the darkness – only to discover that the car was a familiar one and that his heart started to beat faster when he recognized it.

"Oi, Foster – what're you doing here?" he hissed into the darkness, once more listening upstairs to discern if Emily had been awakened by the car door or by his voice.

Gillian stood before him in the glow of the kitchen light, her face still drawn and tired from the events of the past few days, hair pulled back into a ponytail while her hands were shoved into the pockets of her trench coat. Yet in some ways, Cal had never seen her look more beautiful.

She looked down at her feet, awkward and embarrassed, then back up at him and finally said, "It's going to sound silly."

But it wasn't going to, he knew. He could read it on her face before she had formed the words on her lips and he knew he wasn't the only one who had spent the evening working on a jigsaw puzzle.

"It's not silly," he told her, reaching out to pull her to his chest. She seemed surprised at first, then seemed to remember exactly _who_ she was dealing with and her arms wrapped around him while her chin came to rest in the hollow between his shoulder and his neck. After a moment, he felt her sigh.

There was a little fight left in Gillian yet, though. She whispered, "I probably shouldn't be here…"

He pulled back to peer into her face. "You got another date then?"

She grinned at his silliness, then shook her head. "You know what I mean, Cal. What about Emily?"

"You let me worry about Emily," he cut her off. "She's got us all figured out anyway."

"You're probably right about that," Gillian agreed.

The look that passed between them silently then was brief and fleeting, but both understood it fully. It was the last piece of a very large and complicated puzzle snapping into place and it was also the scattering of pieces for a new puzzle, one with a color scheme that would no doubt shift and change as they began to assemble it.

But no matter what, there was one important thing that both agreed on: This time counted for sure.

FIN


End file.
